Kansas Abortion Clinic Celebrates: We've Killed 1,200 Babies in Only One Year

Congratulations South Wind Women’s Center, you succeeded in killing more than three people every day for an entire year. Be proud.

The clinic opened one year ago in the same building late-tem abortionist George Tiller operated prior to being murdered in 2009. It is the first and only operating abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

South Wind said it has seen a total of about 1,500 patients for reproductive care, including abortions up to 14 weeks. Patients have come from across the state and from a few other states, such as Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Patient numbers are “right in line with our projections,” said Julie Burkhart, founder of Trust Women, which raised money to open the clinic April 3, 2013. “I feel, of course, positive about that. We have women coming to see us.”

Anti-abortion groups worked to close South Wind before it opened, asking the Wichita City Council to rezone the property near Oliver and Kellogg, and questioning Trust Women’s finances.

“I feel that in this line of work, with the legislation that’s become law and the political climate, our work at times feels tenuous at best,” Burkhart said at the clinic recently. “It’s disconcerting feeling like another shoe could drop.”

Burkhart founded Trust Women to carry out the “vision that Dr. George Tiller had for women of the world.” The clinic is still paying off debt from opening however, and even has to fly doctors in because no one in the region seems willing to “come forward,” Burkhart explained.

A preliminary report from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said 7,479 abortions were performed last year, the second-lowest number since 1987, according to KDHE’s report.

The state has numbers going back to 1971, but reporting did not become mandatory until July 1, 1995. The highest number of abortions in Kansas – 12,612 – occurred in 1973. Numbers have fluctuated over the years, with a decrease since Tiller died.